Readers: The 10th anniversary of the Flint water crisis is Thursday, April 25. MLive/The Flint Journal will have full coverage in the coming week, but I’m kicking it off by turning over this week’s column to Journal multimedia specialist Jake May. He not only was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for his photography documenting the crisis, he was a resident of the city. In his own words, here is what the past decade has meant to him. – John Hiner, president, MLive.com
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In January 2016, after more than a year of intimately photographing the Flint water crisis and living through it as a resident, I found it had infiltrated my psyche.
I was in my grandmother’s house — the safe place I would visit every summer as a child. Now, though, my grandmother and I looked from her living room window to see a house fully engulfed in flames in the distance.
I ran to the scene with my camera in hand, and as I began photographing the fire, I felt heat on my back. I turned to see a second home in flames behind me.
Shocked, I tried to make sense of it while my camera was still at my eye, ever vigilant. I turned once more, this time 90 degrees. My camera dropped, as did my jaw. Every house was on fire as far as the eye could see.
That is when I woke in a cold sweat from this wretched nightmare. My mind was making sense of all that I had witnessed in my community, and the message was clear.
The entire city was on fire and I felt helpless. My subconscious terror was a manifestation of how this water crisis had a stranglehold on every Flint resident.
I recall a pile of hundreds of empty water bottles and a wall of full ones in my home, used daily for bathing, cooking, consuming and simply being.
I remember the first moment the water seemed not right. My brother Joshua was living with me and asked me to “smell this water” he had poured from the tap. It smelled rancid, and the off-brown color kept us from using it again.
To date, Flint residents still haven’t been told explicitly they can drink the water even though the nation’s spotlight was on Flint amid a manmade disaster.
The Flint water plant went online April 25, 2014, when the city switched its drinking water supply from Detroit’s system to the Flint River in a cost-saving move.
This ongoing story of environmental injustice and bad decision making was felt by nearly 100,000 residents searching endlessly for answers and, more so, a solution.
Nationally, I heard cries from spectators looking on from afar saying, “Why don’t people just leave their homes?”
Not everyone can afford to get up and leave their life behind.
Would you want to leave a home where you’ve built memories for 30 years? And to go where?
There’s no longer water being distributed, yet residents still don’t trust the water coming out of the tap. Many are still buying bottled water as a safety measure.
Trust in government eroded faster than lead off the pipes and getting that back will be a decades-long journey for most residents.
Yards were dug up in search of lead pipes, and to date not every pipe has been replaced. Most importantly, parents of children who consumed the water are still worried about their children’s emotional well-being and mental and physical health.
So, where is Flint 10 years later?
It’s a city whose identity will bear a scar of this manmade mistake for generations to come, but it won’t be defined by it.
It’s defined by its people.
And I have always aimed through my lens to show the impact this has had on Flint’s people, all while seeing the humanity of how we pushed through and found solace and strength in one another.
Flint is grit, and that was proven time and again throughout the water crisis.
It’s in the courage mother LeeAnne Walters shouldered while being a whistleblower alongside EPA’s Miguel del Toral, testing her water and fighting for her children’s health.
It’s in the toughness in every protester, amplified through action. Since Day One, activist Tony Palladeno Jr. relentlessly used his voice as he fought for his city and its people, both seeking justice for charges against those who wronged his city and fighting for clean water.
It’s the bravery and fortitude of Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha for sounding the alarm on children’s blood lead levels. It’s the strength of character of Mari Copeny, known as Little Miss Flint, who hasn’t let her foot off the gas in her fight for Flint kids.
It’s an experience that bonded an American city through perseverance without taking away its pride.
Stop using Flint’s name in vain or referring to our city’s identity as solely a water crisis. We are so much more than that. And know that water is a human right. Period.
Through it all, we’ve stayed and are learning to thrive again as we build back stronger.
Flintstones stand tall. Flintstones stand united.
We will continue to fight for each other and for our city as we will always find hope, even in the darkest days.
Nightmares be damned, Flint will always continue to dream.
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